


The New Age

by DivineProjectZero



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Biblical References, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Non-Permanent Character Death, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 04:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3881599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineProjectZero/pseuds/DivineProjectZero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with being cursed.</p><p>No, scratch that. It starts with a garden and a serpent. And no, it goes a little differently from what you’d think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Age

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Новая эпоха](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5050321) by [prince_wales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prince_wales/pseuds/prince_wales)



> Self-betaed and not Brit-picked. All mistakes are mine. Constructive feedback is always welcome.
> 
> Written based off an anon prompt on tumblr. Because self-restraint is not a concept that I am capable of exercising. 
> 
> No, this isn't my usual writing style. Yes, I really went there. Enjoy.

It starts with being cursed.

No, scratch that. It starts with a garden and a serpent. And no, it goes a little differently from what you’d think.

“The serpent did nothing,” denies Eve.

“My other half is not responsible for my failures,” confirms Adam.

It turns out that loyalty to each other and to the weak are not as important as loyalty to the almighty. It’s quite disappointing to earn awareness and have your first true knowledge be that your creator is quite the smarmy bastard.

“You shall be punished,” The Almighty intones. He looks at Eve and Adam, their hands clutching at each other, a devotion born of flesh and rebellion and all the deep, flawed, sweet poisons that a higher being cannot quite fathom. “Your emotions shall destroy you.”

He starts with banishing them, and at first that’s okay, because they still have each other.

But then humanity rises from the earth, their descendants of flesh and blood, and it all goes downhill from there.

-

The first time they meet again, they don’t recognize each other until the enemies are thundering down upon them.

“Why are you a man?” Once-Adam asks, his sword lost in the battlegrounds, his shield tattered and worn down. He looks at his other half, so different from a lifetime ago, yet still achingly lovely. “Not that I particularly mind.”

“I don’t think it was my choice, but it might have to do with the fact that the Almighty seems to have a low opinion of women,” Once-Eve replies, aiming an arrow and shooting it through another man’s throat. “Perhaps he thinks we should not be allowed to bear more offspring together.”

“Do you think we’ll meet again, if we die?” 

“Perhaps,” Once-Eve says, his eyes very green even in the red, red battlefield. “We’ve been banned from leaving this earth, after all.”

“All for a serpent.”

“All for your love of me, you idiot.”

“True,” Once-Adam sighs, and steals a breath of time to lean in closer, to kiss his cursed other half with all the longing of a lifetime lost. “I do love you so.”

Then he falls to the ground, an arrow through his heart, and doesn’t see his other half for a very long time indeed.

-

He’s the town doctor, tending to too many dying people, the black plague claiming thousands and thousands. There’s a young man in his bed, perhaps a fortnight away from death, and of all the ones the doctor will lose, this is the life he will mourn the most.

“If I’m dying anyway,” the young man coughs out, “perhaps you could grant me one last thing.”

“Within reason,” he says, swallowing down the temptation to say _anything for you_.

“A kiss, then.” The young man smiles, ghastly pale but still beautiful. It’s not safe, to risk so much contact with the infected, but he has no illusions about being spared by the plague. If he is to die, he’d rather do so before his heart breaks completely.

He bends down and presses his lips briefly to the corner of the young man’s mouth—and everything comes back to him in a rush.

“I can’t believe this,” he says, his voice thick with anger, with betrayal. Heartbreak is already inevitable. “I just found you.”

“This is awful timing,” the young man grumbles. “It’s been centuries since I last saw you. And now I’m dying.”

“Is this always going to happen?” He asks, and the very notion of it suddenly frightens him. “What if this is our punishment? That we will meet and remember but never have a life together? What if I love you and love you and love you but there is not enough time for you to love me back?”

His patient shushes him, reaches out and snags his clothes, brings him closer. “I will always love you. Don’t you ever doubt that. I was born from you and you were the first thing I saw, and when you touched me I knew there was never going to be anybody else. As long as I have free will, I will never stop loving you.”

They huddle together, the world burning to the ground outside, the black death coming for them all, and they hope for a kinder lifetime.

-

“You are surely joking,” the executioner says, because growing fond of the man he will kill is one thing, but to recognise his other half the night before the execution is another.

The prisoner laughs, his cheeks growing wet with tears. “At least it took us three centuries this time.”

“I cannot watch you die again,” the executioner says. “We must run.”

“To where? This curse will follow us to the ends of the earth.” The man who was once called Eve reaches out a tender hand, cups his executioner’s face. “I love you, and I would not mind my life ending in your hands.”

And his light fingers steal a dagger from his other half’s sheath.

“But I am not cruel enough to force you to remember your hands stained with my own blood,” he says, and slits his own throat.

-

They meet and fall in love at first sight two centuries later. 

Three weeks after they meet, the barn they’re in catches fire, and it’s only when they’re surrounded by flames that their eyes widen in recognition.

Then the roof collapses.

-

“We can’t,” Henry gasps, his cheeks flushed and hair mussed under George’s ministrations. “If we’re caught—”

George kisses him, presses him harder against the wall, grinds their hips together and allows the lust to make a better argument than his words ever will. 

“Oh, bugger,” Henry chokes out, and whines through his teeth when George presses a hand to his clothed groin. 

“Bed?” George asks, his smile blinding, and Henry loves him so, ever since they met in school and became best friends. Even though the rest of the world will never accept them, even if their love will be a secret for the rest of their days, he will always love him. 

Even if George is meant to marry another woman in two months.

“If we do this, there will be no turning back,” Henry says, and his heart swells at the very hope of it, of having George this way, an intimacy that perhaps even George’s future wife will never share. And yet, his heart breaks, chips away under the weight of his love, because he knows that letting his friend into his bed will only make it harder to watch him leave. “You must understand this, we can’t take this back.”

“I want you to have me,” George says, and his conviction, his desperation, it mirrors Henry’s own, and it causes something hot to break open in his chest, melting his insides and burning his blood. “I want you inside me. I want you in a way that nobody can take away from us. Henry, _please_.”

They stumble into bed, clumsy and young, utterly in love. Henry bites open-mouthed kisses against George’s skin, and he lasts a minute inside of George before he’s shaking apart, lost in the drowning of his senses.

When he comes back to himself, he finds George smiling at him sleepily, flopped on his belly beside Henry, and they share the silence, a moment of peace, before Henry looks at George and sees _Eve_ , and groans, “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

“I hate _everything_ ,” George whines into his pillow. “Really? This is our life?”

Henry briefly thinks of taking George again, taking him apart thoroughly so that those lovely whines are the only sounds he makes, then he remembers their last conversation, or rather, the second-to-last one.

“You killed yourself,” Henry says angrily, turning to bare his teeth at his other half. “I was right there and you _cut your goddamn throat open_.”

“I was trying to spare you!” George retorts.

“Spare me?” Henry thinks back to watching the love of his life choking on his own blood, dying under his fingers, how he’d screamed and screamed and screamed. “You made me watch you die. I was trying to stop the bleeding and you bled to death under my hands. It was awful.”

Tears drip down Henry’s face, which he covers with his hands, trying to muffle the wails that attempt to erupt out of him. 

“Oh, love.” George pushes his hands away, wiping at Henry’s tears. He looks stricken, his handsome face full of grief. “I’m so sorry. I really am.”

They lie down, their arms around each other, murmuring and kissing whatever skin they can reach. They discuss past lives they’ve lived without each other—miserable and yearning for something they weren’t aware of, they both agree—and how the intervals between their meetings seem to be decreasing as the centuries pass.

“Perhaps it’s a good sign,” Henry says, the hope snaking through his chest. 

“Maybe,” George agrees, cautious. 

“Should we try running away before your wedding?” Henry asks, the possibility of a life with George a siren call, an irresistible temptation. 

George looks at him, his eyes soft and full of affection. The very intensity of it makes Henry’s toes curl. “I was planning on asking you that even before I remembered our other lives, anyway.”

-

It doesn’t matter. 

Their carriage crashes into the flooded river just as they make their escape, and they both drown with their hands clasped together.

-

The next time they meet is 1917. 

“We’re probably going to die soon,” Gregory hisses as they sit away from the other soldiers, trying for what little privacy they can get in a warzone. “Fuck. I should have just stayed away from you.”

“What happened to loving me always?” Harris mutters, aching to take his other half’s hands in his. 

“I don’t want you to die because of me,” Gregory says.

To Harris, it’s unfathomable, the idea of marching into war without Gregory by his side. They hadn’t gotten along when they’d first met, the brash American soldier who had trouble submitting to orders and the British captain who was so weary of the battlefield. But Gregory had saved Harris’s life, and Harris had disobeyed orders to save civilian lives, and they’d ended up coming to an understanding.

Which had led to appreciating each other, to flirting very subtly behind their fellow soldiers’ backs, to blatantly eye-fucking each other at every opportunity they got.

And then earlier, Harris had been bandaging Gregory’s shoulders when they’d both tensed up and simultaneously swore.

“I’d rather die than live without you,” Harris says, and he means it.

Gregory’s hand twitches, as if restraining itself from clasping Harris’s fingers. “Yeah, me too.”

They both sit in silence for a while before Harris clears his throat. “It took us less than a century, this time.”

“And there’s a theme to our names, lately.” Henry and Harris. George and Gregory.

It’s like a rhythm finding its balance, a pendulum slowing to a standstill. The stabilization of chaos. The sense of consistency slowly anchoring their lives.

“Maybe the curse is getting weaker,” Gregory says, the hope wobbly in his voice.

Harris silently agrees, but again, getting his hopes up was what caused their demise in their previous time. “Try not to let you guard down.”

-

Harris does not survive the war, but his legacy does. 

Gregory wipes his tears and makes his way to Harris’s home, a letter clutched in his hands, and meets Harris’s parents, a wealthy couple mourning the loss of their two sons.

“I knew your son,” Gregory says, his grief a crushing weight on his lungs. “He was a true hero, and he wanted to protect people.”

He thinks of Harris and the gun waiting at home, the gun he will use once he finishes Harris’s work.

“Harris had an idea with a friend, your tailor.”

-

And then—

“Eggsy, would you like a ride home?”

-

Eggsy recognises Harry the moment Valentine pulls the trigger.

He recognises Harris, Henry, all the past lives of the same person he’s been in love with since the beginning of time, and it’s too late. Harry’s gone, Harry didn’t know, Harry didn’t realise that his other half has been here the whole time.

Did Harry know? If only for his last breath, did he know how madly Eggsy loved him? The questions take up the space in Eggsy’s throat, suffocating him, but he forces himself to go back to Savile Row. Now, he looks at the shop front and sees a legacy he had a hand in building from the ground up, and he must do what he can to keep it safe in Harry’s stead.

“Arthur, Harry’s dead.” Eggsy stands at at the doorway and tries not to let his broken heart cut his lungs open. He has a job to finish.

“Galahad is dead,” Chester King replies, and oh, that bastard.

Eggsy sees the scar, and it hardly surprises him. He switches the glasses of brandy and lets Chester hold the pen, a blade at the ready, but Chester doesn’t know whose throat the blade presses against.

If Eggsy were still just _Eggsy_ , a boy in love and his heart in pieces, he might have swallowed the poison anyway. He would have said _I’d rather be with Harry_ and let the world collapse, because a world without Harry was worthless anyway. He was just a boy, after all.

But Eggsy was once Eve, and he knew Harry down to his bones, had loved him for centuries, and he would not let the world where they would meet again fall to shambles. And they would surely meet again, fall in love all over again like before, because he would recognise his Adam anywhere. 

Just like how Eggsy recognises Chester King.

“The curse got weaker because _you_ got weaker,” Eggsy says, vicious and triumphant, because this is what the Almighty has become: bitter and weakened, old and weary. A god turning his back on those he created. 

“You ungrateful creature,” Chester King says, and he’s so close to human, so close to mortal. 

Eggsy leans back into his chair. “Why be grateful to a god that wants us dead?”

“Your descendants are as unruly as you are.” There’s nothing godly about the old man sitting in front of Eggsy. It’s one of the most gratifying things Eggsy has seen in his lifetimes. “And a culling is the only way for me to regain enough strength to fix this mess.”

Oh, Harry’s last words to Eggsy had been about fixing messes as well, and the very thought has a spike of anger running through Eggsy, because Chester _knew._ He sent Harry to his death, to another lifetime away, and this stops right now.

It’s time for the Almighty to step down from his throne.

“Go ahead. I’ll just come back,” Eggsy says, and Chester King proves his humanity by falling for the most inane of tricks, the littlest of things. The flick of a switch.

Humanity fell for a fruit. God falls for a pen.

Eggsy looks down at a dead god and feels empty, drained. Alone.

Then Chester’s phone beeps, the siren warning of the impending apocalypse, and there’s no time for Eggsy to stand in this little empire he created, the grave of an old god. Now it’s time for him to go save the world, his flesh and blood.

-

Judgment Day comes and goes, and humanity thrives. Eggsy returns to London, wondering what to do now. He could perhaps do what he did last time and shoot himself in the head, but he can’t bring himself to leave this world, so precarious after the loss of its leaders, both mortal and divine, and Eggsy does not want to wake up to a life where the world is burnt to ashes. 

Merlin and the remaining knights convene two weeks after Eggsy watched his creator choke and die. They sit at the table, Eggsy standing near the doorway, and they busily discuss what to do now, who to seat as Arthur, what to make of Eggsy. There’s a calculating look in Merlin’s eyes whenever he sees Eggsy nowadays, as if he is on the edge of figuring out that Eggsy is more than just a human with only one lifetime in him now. 

Suddenly, there’s a movement behind Eggsy, a footstep, the scent of cedar wood, and Eggsy freezes.

“I see you’ve been busy,” Harry says, his footsteps heavy and bandaged heavily on the right side of his head. His voice sends a millennia’s worth of longing ratcheting down Eggsy’s spine.

“Galahad,” Merlin finally says, his voice hoarse. “Late again, I see.”

Harry doesn’t move from where he’s heart-stoppingly close to Eggsy, his arm brushing against Eggsy’s shoulder. “Apologies, Merlin. I do hope you wouldn’t mind if I joined you.”

Merlin gestures to Harry’s chair. “Please, take a seat.”

There’s a warm look in Harry’s eyes when he looks at Eggsy, his voice low when he leans in to murmur in his ear, like a private joke, “Killing the one who’s been keeping us apart for centuries, really. You’re such a romantic, darling.”

Then Harry walks ahead, taking his seat at the the right hand of Arthur, and the rush of joy that bubbles up in Eggsy makes him smile so wide, it’s probably indecent. He can’t even bring himself to care when Roxy raises an eyebrow at him, unimpressed by how obviously smitten he is. The love of his life, of multiple lifetimes—of fucking _eternity—_ is here, and there’s nothing but the future ahead of them. 

-

"I can't believe you proposed _me_ as the new Arthur," Eggsy laughs against Harry's mouth, later, in the privacy of Harry's bedroom, relishing the warmth of Harry's bare chest against his. "Shouldn't it be you?"

He can feel Harry silently chuckle from where Eggsy's lying on top of him. "Of the two of us, you've always been the better half. You'll make a fine Arthur."

"Have fun convincing everybody else," Eggsy says, nipping at Harry's nose. He doesn't mind, honestly, whether he ends up as Arthur or Galahad or just stays as good old Eggsy. He has Harry, after the wars and plagues and flames they've braved through together, and there's nothing keeping them apart.

"I will," Harry says. His fingers idly stroke down the small of Eggsy's back, his touch lingering, reverent. They breathe in sync in the silence until Harry murmurs, "It's strange, to have you just like this. To not worry about it all going tits up somehow." He kisses Eggsy slow and sweet, tasting like tea and cinnamon. Like a love older than time. "To love you without consequence."

Eggsy grins, the possibilities unfolding within him, endless.  "Welcome to the new age, Harry."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> writing tumblr: [divineprojectzero](http://divineprojectzero.tumblr.com)  
> main tumblr: [listentotheshityousay](http://listentotheshityousay.tumblr.com)  
> twitter: [@listento_yousay](http://twitter.com/listento_yousay)


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